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Well...been impossibly busy. I had planned my final sem in NUS to be a huge break, when I just focused on school and relaxing, but things don't work out as planned sometimes.

Without any canvassing for jobs, I've got jobs falling upon my laps continually; of course, I can reject all of them but well... I really enjoy what I do, so I turned none of them down. And as a result I'm deathly busy.

School hasn't went out as planned either. I'm happy that two of my major modules, moral and time are really interesting, and that Einstein's Relativity and Wireless Communications are as easy as I expected them to be. BUT. The Japanese level 1 that I took to waste time (since I already know quite a bit of jap), turned out to be a hyper time-consuming module, with approx 9 hours of work every week. As a result, I'm packed with both work and school, with hardly enough time to do much else.

Of course, among all this, we still have time to go for good food once in awhile.

BBQ baby lobsters!

A very value for money BBQ buffet, @ hotel Rendezvous, normally @40 per pax. But with a 1-for-1 online voucher, it's 40 for 2 pax, which makes it very worth it.

Well actually I was telling Clarisse that it wasn't worth it, until they started serving a tray of these things. Thus, you don't see anything but them.

But seriously, without the lobsters, it's too expensive and with them, it becomes fantastic value for $.


And some random stuff:

Also, almost a month back, I got this from epiCentre, it's a GARskin, pretty chio, but expensive @ 50 bucks. But you can tell the quality, as it's just as advertised. When removed, there's hardly any stain at all.

Chio right??
Clarisse loves her very personalized iBook now (previously Cindy's)

And I also bought a nice pink shirt for myself =)
Can't really remember when but it's really nice.
I like it that's it's uniquely queer haha..
ok I'm wierd. -___- don't remind me.

And a random pink rose.

On the sunday that just passed, we went for the S-pop concert, tix courtesy of Wanz, who gave up the tix due to a Man U match o_O

That's a real shocker. Like most people say, those who don't like soccer can never understand it's lure. I'm one of those. But anyway, thx to Wanz for the tix.

We went for dinner at Le Bistro, a nice French restaurant at the first floor of the Indoor Stadium. We had only an hour to have dinner, as I had previously been working from morning till evening. See how busy I've been?

Anyway, I knew it was a gourmet restaurant, but I did't know it was THAT atas. First of all, there was no one around, felt almost like we booked the whole place. Then, half way thru our dinner, Le Yao (the tcs actress) came by and sat down with a friend 2 tables away. Was slightly surprised, but not enough to make me not enjoy the great meal.


Starter was Onion Soup, which hardly looked appetizing (quite a disappointment), so no pic. Here's us with our main courses.

Grilled Salmon Fillet for her, and Ratatouille for me.

Well my Ratatouille was pretty nice, but not amazingly so. Mine was good, but it was totally overshadowed by her grilled salmon fillet. It was extremely skillfully done, with the external layer grilled to crisp perfection, while the centre was all medium rare.

So one mouthful would give you nice juicy cooked salmon, plus a centre that simply melts in ur mouth. It's easy to imagine, something like having cooked salmon and salmon sashimi in the same mouthful. Never knew those two would go so well together.

Dessert

was Pistachio ice cream with peanut biscotti. Well it's nice because of the unique flavours, and the berry sauce and mixed nuts sprinkled around. Otherwise, it wasn't really outstanding.

Well pix are not allowed, but I took this one of JJ and 金沙 but as you can see they are pretty tiny. Well thx to wanz tix, the seats were pretty good, but the pic doesn't do justice to our location.

Anyway, nice performances by JJ, Eric Moo, 陈伟联，石欣慧，李圣杰，萧敬腾， Elva, and many more. But it was a great performance, except that the performances were all very short and the commercial breaks were awkward when a broken-chinese speaking MC tried his best to entertain the audience. Considering the fact that we didn't need to pay, it was a fantastic show.


26th March
Clarisse's Birthday!

Started the day with this:

Don't see anything? look carefully..

There?

Both of us woke up to a great morning to the first flower bloom on the plant given at Yiran & Guus' wedding. Really pretty, and very meaningful cos after the time spent to take care of it, it flowered on Clarisse's Birthday. Made even more special when we found out that each flower blooms in the morning, and withers by night, not lasting more than a day.

A great Birthday Gift. (or excuse not to give anything else)

She took a full day of leave, but I had class. But I had to give something special somehow. So, I asked her to come by NUS in the evening. And we set off to the secret location I booked:

Ristorante Valentino

(www.valentino.sg)

Well she was pleasantly surprised, as we read about this place in a magazine about a year ago, and said that we would go there someday, and I picked this special day to bring her there.

It's located in a quiet corner of Bukit Timah (along rifle range rd), which was why I asked her to meet me in school. Originally booked at 6pm, we arrived early at 5.30pm, and the staff were still having their daily pre-dinner briefing, so we waited outside patiently.

Meals here are generally split into two time slots, 6-8pm and 8-10pm, with about 20 seats available that are usually fully booked on weekends. (book ahead if u wanna go on weekends!)

The ambience, unlike most upper-tier restaurants which appear formal and slightly uptight, this place was very homely, cosy and comfortable.

As the waiter explained, most regular customers don't need the menu - not because they can memorise it, but they go for the daily specials which consist of numerous improvised dishes updated frequently.

Also, they neither have a wine nor a desserts menu - you just walk over to the wine shelves and pick what you want, and the desserts come in a push-cart trolley after you finish your meal.

And so we ordered mostly from the daily specials.

Starters: Beef Raviolle

Minced beef mixed in premium blue cheese, stuffed within square pieces of pasta. Fantastic, but a pretty common Italian delicacy. It looks sparse as we ordered only 1 starter to be shared by both of us, so half a plate each - to leave more space for the good stuff. ^_^

Nice miniature doggies by our window seat.

2003 Barolo

The wine we picked, the cheapest from the premium wine rack; rather than spend 10 bucks for a single glass of 05 Chardonnay (ain't too good), why not spend 60 for a bottle of premium wine? It's only twice the price (3 glasses, thus 20 per glass) for much much much better wine.

Ok I'm sorry 'only' isn't a very appropriate word here.

1st Main: Pizza Porcini, Rucola, Prosciutto di Parma
translated: Tomato, Mozzarella, Italian Gourmet Mushroom, Parma Ham & Rocket Salad

Gourmet Italian pizza, not like other pizzas in sg. The crust is super thin but very filling, oven-baked with lots of greens covering the top, along with thin slices of mozarella cheese sprinkled all over.

Clarisse said that she hadn't tasted pizza this good since Italy (her 10-country europe trip in 05), so it must be pretty good.

Truth is, we underestimated the serving, and this alone, @23.90 , could pretty much fill the stomachs of 2 peeps, so it's not an inaccessible place after all. In fact, we looked at each other and kinda said at the same time, "did we order too much?"

2nd Main: Braised Beef Shank

The name says it all. Well, almost. Besides the very easily cut beef shank chunks in nice italian red wine sauce, the potatoes are impossibly heavenly. I never knew that I could say this about potatoes, but there you go.

There were 2 types, as you can see form the different colours, the long ones and the round ones. The long ones were soft with a sweet aftertaste (probably natural), and the round ones were very chewy with a tinge of cheese flavour in it - of course these were artificially mixed and made into balls. Very nice but there were only 2 of them.

And finally, the desserts! Which the restaurant is famous for.

Fig Pie

Ok, honestly, I never knew figs bore edible fruits. Clueless me. Secondly, I had no idea it would taste so sweet. Unique, but overtly sweet for our palates.

Cookies & Cream Biscuit w/ Vanilla Ice Cream

The ice cream wasn't much to shout about, as it was pretty normal (haagen dazs tastes better) but the cookies & cream biscuits were lovely. Original home-made Italian snack, which was kinda the inspiration for Oreos cookies. It was just right in every way, not too sweet, not too crispy (over-baked).

And after a great meal, we walked a short distance in the moonlight savouring in the fantastic tastes of good food and great wine in our mouths.

And the short walk took us to... our bus stop. To take a half-hour bus ride home. (Yes, I splurge on some creature comforts but I save on other unnecessary ones ^_^)